This invention relates in general to a means and apparatus for placing a unique serial or identification number on each film or tape copied and more particularly to a means of automatically transfering said identification to unauthorized copies (unnoticed) so as to improve the ability to apprehend the unauthorized copiers of movies and tapes; records and other recorded media.
The movie industry has suffered considerable financial loss due to illegal copying of films and video tapes. One of the problems in this connection is the difficulty in tracing the source that enables the copies to be made. No system has been developed that would satisfactorily give each copy a unique non-erasable identification number automatically. This invention is a means for automatically placing a unique identification number in each film print and other recorded media and also the implanting in all illegal copies the same identification number as the source from which they were copied.
There are a number of systems that have been developed and proposed for transmitting auxiliary information along with the main program being broadcast. Superaudible and subaudible transmission has been used in prior art for achieving such multiplexing of an allocated broadcast channel. Known techniques are not particularly well adapted to the transmission of unobtrusive coding signals for identifying and verifying the transmission of a particular program.
In general the known and proposed techniques employ an unacceptably large portion of the program channel. In particular there is too much interference with the program material. Prior methods of locating markers on film were usually hand made by cutting out an edge; crayon marks; white paint on edge; subaudible cue tones (as used to advance slides; alert for end of tape) At times some of these methods result in damage to the film and have to be hand applied. A more recent identification technique; a pattern recognition system which requires placing in a memory bank the pattern of each and every program and commercial, which, when received, has to be compared with all the patterns in the memory bank to recognize the "match" of the program pattern. Human effort is still required to capture the pattern when it is first broadcast. Further, this system has difficulty in distinguishing nationally used commercials from the local versions, which are identical except for a local message at the end of the broadcast. The system tends to report a local broadcast as a national one. In any case they do not provide a means of automatically placing unique identification numbers on film.
Whatever the precise merits, features and advantages of the above cited references none achieves or fulfills the purposes of the present invention. Accordingly, it is a major purpose of this invention to provide a means of automatically placing in each program its own unique identification number. In particular it is an important purpose of this invention to provide a program identification technique that is unheard by the listener and unseen by the viewer.
It is further a purpose of this invention that each identification be an integral part of the film or magnetic tape itself. It is also a purpose of this invention that the said identification number be undetectable by unauthorized copiers. It is an additional purpose of this invention that any unauthorized copy of a legal or illegal film have the same identification number as the film from which it was made transferred to it. It is a further purpose of this invention that unique ID numbers be given to authorized copies sequentially in its normal process without any special treatment.
It is a further purpose of this invention to provide a means of identifying a film or magnetic tape so that the information contained in the coding can be decoded from either the film or tape directly.
It is a further purpose of this invention to provide a means of identifying and detecting broadcast transmissions comprising AM & FM radio stations; TV stations; cable systems; juke box records; etc.